Colombia Peace Deal Headed to Defeat, Causing Shock and Uncertainty

October 2, 2016 11:17 PM

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BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A Colombian peace deal that the president and the country’s largest rebel group had signed just days earlier appeared headed to defeat in a referendum on Sunday, leaving the fate of a 52-year war suddenly uncertain.

Though the government had not officially called the result, the “no” vote was ahead by half a percentage point with 99 percent of the ballots counted, the government said Sunday.

“There’s no justice in this accord,” said Roosevelt Pulgarin, 32, a music teacher who cast his ballot against the agreement on a rainy day at an elementary school in Bogotá, the capital. “If ‘no’ wins, we won’t have peace, but at least we won’t give the country away to the guerrillas. We need better negotiations.”

The referendum result overturned a timetable intended to end the FARC insurgency within months. The rebels had agreed to immediately abandon their battle camps for 28 “concentration zones” throughout the country, where over the next six months they would hand over their weapons to United Nations teams.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A Colombian peace deal that the president and the country’s largest rebel group had signed just days before was defeated in a referendum on Sunday, leaving the fate of a 52-year war suddenly uncertain.

To many Colombians who had endured years of kidnappings and killings by the rebels, the agreement was too lenient. It would have allowed most rank-and-file fighters to start lives as normal citizens, and rebel leaders to receive reduced sentences for war crimes.